I remember watching every person on the side of the road.
She gave two thumbs-up to our convoy as we passed her on the side of the road. There was the little girl whose photo I took. My co-driver, a girl I had been friends with since we were 15, had opened to door and was hanging out of the truck screaming at him to move. He moved just in time, but for a moment I thought I would hit him. He ran out in the road and squatted in front of me. There was the young boy who tried to get me to stop my truck as we rolled slowly through his town. I saw his face like I saw everyone's who I hadn't seen since we got back to North Carolina. I thought about him a lot as my husband and I made the three-hour drive to Hickory, North Carolina, for the reunion. One of them we wouldn't see again until we landed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in the pre-dawn hours of Easter morning 2005. The two guys who had been in the truck survived, but they didn't get out unscathed. I see it as vividly today as I did then, red, pouring out onto the light-colored sand. We all carried coolers in between the seats of our trucks so we could have cold water and maybe an energy drink to keep us going on those especially long days, it was not uncommon to spend 12 hours or more behind the wheel in a single day. Someone said that we might want to empty the cooler, so the melted ice didn't slosh all over the inside of the tuck. We loaded the damaged tractors onto our trailers. We dropped off our load and escorting what was left of the convoy back down south to Navistar, just over the Iraq and Kuwait border, the place we called home. Once, as we got to the base where we were spending the night, we heard that the convoy ahead of us had been hit. We'd often get a follow-on mission on the way back south things being shipped home for an outgoing unit or equipment that needed to be fixed at a larger facility in Kuwait. Soldiers up north needed gear and supplies, everything from broom handles to artillery rounds. Missions came down daily, and we were often only a day behind other convoys in our unit. Like most transportation units in Iraq in 2004, the 1450th Transportation Company got hit a lot. I remember every time we heard there had been a convoy hit and that feeling in the pit of my stomach as we anxiously waited for news.
Staying connected, even to people we were in the same country with, was difficult. We waited in line to pay for internet time on a computer in a small trailer on our base, and we were never on base for long. We didn't have smartphones or Facebook in 2004. We would search the CB radios we had for their channel until we heard those familiar voices because, for those few moments, we knew all of them were safe.
I remember the excitement that spread through the convoy as we realized we were passing another convoy from our unit going the other direction. I also see the faces of the Soldiers in my unit when I close my eyes. I took this highway all the time, but I was following the truck in front of me like I had done for a year in the desert. Then I noticed what was in front of me, a tractor-trailer carrying a large shipping container like the ones we d in Iraq. I was confused at first.his was an exit I took all the time I knew my way around the area. I can still see the roads made of gravel and dirt, the highway with holes from IEDs, the Bailey bridges used in place of bridges that have been blown up, and the floating bridge over the Tigris river where we would wait so long to cross that we once received motor fire.Ī few years after I got home, I was driving on the highway in North Carolina, and I missed my exit by more than 10 miles. I remember my face covered in sweat and dust.
#Old soldiers reunion 2017 newton nc full
Imagine the hottest day of the year then someone points a hair dryer at you on full blast. My first deployment seemed like a lifetime ago, yet when I close my eyes, I can see the sand rushing by, the road stretching out into the horizon. It took one of our own dying to bring up the idea of getting together. Could it have been that long? I was traveling to a long-overdue reunion. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL 7 / 7 Show Caption + Hide Caption – (Photo Credit: U.S.
Army) VIEW ORIGINAL 6 / 7 Show Caption + Hide Caption – (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL 5 / 7 Show Caption + Hide Caption – (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL 4 / 7 Show Caption + Hide Caption – (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL 3 / 7 Show Caption + Hide Caption – (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL 2 / 7 Show Caption + Hide Caption – (Photo Credit: U.S. 1 / 7 Show Caption + Hide Caption – (Photo Credit: U.S.
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